From Tron, With Love
by kgmohror
Summary: It's date night for Tron and Yori - and Tron has a very special surprise for his best girl. Written in response to an idle comment on Twitter. That's how these things happen.


**From Tron, With Love**

Yori cocked her head and cast an appraising glance around the flowing contours of her quarters. Frowning slightly, she laid a palm on the wall. Instantly the brilliant ribbons and whorls of light that brightened her living space softened to a muted glow. Yori nodded in satisfaction at the effect: suitably romantic.

Upon arriving home from the lab, she'd traded her utilitarian work togs for a filmy, flowing matrix that shimmered when she moved and revealed enough of her slim form beneath to make Tron's staid and respectable blue circuitry shift toward violet when he saw her in it. Not that she'd ever point it out, of course. Yori giggled to herself, imagining how the circuits around Tron's auditory inputs would blaze magenta with mortification if she did.

It still surprised her sometimes that she and Tron had formed such a warm binary connection. He was so different from her previous bitfriends – mostly unstable, buggy Programs who never hung around long. Her expression darkened at the memory of the last one, a half-hacked CAD Program who'd caught a virus from an "entertainment" Program of questionable coding.

By contrast, Tron was straighter and more reliable than the data streams that her Solar Sailer traversed high above Grid City. He was a security Program, and he took his function **very** seriously. Tron was particularly protective of Yori, claiming that his close monitoring was at the direction of his User, Alan-One. Whether that was sound data, Yori had no way of testing; but she knew Tron had a closer connection to his User than any other Program on the Grid.

At first Tron's dedication to maintaining the integrity of her coding had rankled a bit. Yori was an adventurous program, fond of testing the limits of her functionality. Her dogged guardian tended to frown disapprovingly at Yori scaling the sheer circuit walls outside the city or diving for shiny bits of data in the Sea of Simulation.

But since he'd rescued her from Master Control Program's "rectification" and intervening in a few other rezzy situations (a potentially painful encounter with a nest of hungry Gridbugs came to mind), Yori had come to appreciate – and ultimately to love – the stalwart security Program. They complemented each other well: Tron kept Yori's feet firmly on the Grid, while she encouraged him to expand his programming a bit. Actually, he could be surprisingly receptive, like when she'd taught him a certain physical interface that Flynn had shown her …

So Yori's processors ticked up a notch when she heard Tron's ping at her quarters' entry port. She hurried to open the portal, revealing the tall, handsome form of her beloved Program. She noted that he was still in work mode, but that was okay. What girl could resist a Program in uniform? Tron stood in the portal, grinning down at her in that half-shy, slightly bemused way of his. He was holding a largish storage bit in his arms. "Hi," his deep voice processor said.

"Come in, Tron." Yori smiled up at him coquettishly and tossed her head, causing the long, pale-yellow data strands that lushly adorned her head to wave gently over her shoulders. (In truth, Yori was a little vain about this particular feature of her coding, and resented having to confine it under her work cap so much of the time.) She observed Tron's optical nodes widen; she knew how much he enjoyed running his digits through that smooth code during their more intimate interfaces.

Tron stepped into her quarters and gazed appreciatively at her new decorating scheme while she stared pointedly at the storage bit he held.

"Um … what have you got there?" She lifted her gaze to see his grin morph into a broad smile. Hm. His optics had an unfamiliar glint that made her wonder if he were fighting off a virus. He leaned down for a quick interface before wordlessly crossing the Gridspace, bit box still in hand. Yori followed him, savoring the frisson of energy created by even the brief pressure of his lips on hers. Since Flynn had introduced Yori to the User concept of the "kiss," Yori and Tron had perfected the function, even discovering a number of variations on the basic algorithm that were diverting indeed.

But Tron apparently wasn't interested in further pursuing that line of experimentation at present. Instead, he lowered his large frame onto her seating platform (the data mesh sagged a little in the middle, but it was the best a working girl could afford) and set the storage unit on the ledge in front of him. Then he patted the grid next to him and favored her with the Tron version of a come-hither look.

Yori sat down beside him. "Well?" She nodded toward the mysterious object.

"It's for you." Tron's circuitry had brightened with repressed eagerness, and Yori was slightly concerned that he might overclock himself.

"Okaaaay. What is it?"

Tron shrugged with a not-very-convincing attempt at nonchalance. "I suppose you'd better find out."

Yori squinted at him suspiciously and laid a palm on his forehead. "You're behaving very strangely, Tron. Are you glitching?"

He laughed at that, a deep, rumbling sound that never failed to warm Yori's circuits.

Yori leaned forward and cautiously tapped the top of the storage unit. It derezzed, and inside she spied a little bundle of coding. The bundle was moving.

Yori reared back in surprise. "What in Lora's name _is_ that thing?"

Tron reached inside and picked the bundle up. Yori observed that it was gold in color and a little smaller than a Bit, with countless data points that were curiously pixilated, giving it a slightly fuzzy look. Whatever it was wriggled in Tron's hands. He held it up for her inspection. "It's a Dat."

Yori let her expression communicate her bewilderment. Tron chuckled again and set the bundle on her lap. Immediately it stretched itself out to a startling length and began rubbing its data points against Yori's neck. To her astonishment, it was soft and warm. It looked up at her and she saw that its optic nodes were brilliant green and a cluster of slightly stiffer fiber optics protruded from each side of its jaw. And then … it made a sound.

"ZrrrrrrZrrrrrrZrrrrrr."

Yori couldn't say why, but she experienced a sudden conviction that this little cluster of coding was the most adorable thing on the Grid. She grinned at Tron and ran her digits over the soft and yielding data points. "A Dat?"

He nodded. "It's kind of like a Bit, I guess, but different." He reached over and tweaked a thumb over the Dat's triangular auditory node. The rhythmic thrumming from somewhere inside the Dat increased in volume.

"I wanted to get you something special, so I asked Alan-One for assistance. He coded this little guy for me. Apparently Lora has something similar, and enjoys it very much." His features took on a hopeful look. "Do you like it?"

The Dat had begun climbing up Yori's torso and around her shoulders. A long, fluffy data stream extended from its body, and it moved it languidly, brushing it under Yori's nose and making her laugh. "I love it!" she giggled, reaching forward to try to retrieve her gift, which had now leapt from the seating platform and was intent on exploring the rest of the gridspace. "What is its function?"

He shrugged. "It's function is … just to make you happy, I guess."

Yori wrapped her arms around Tron's neck and interfaced him soundly. "It does. It does make me very happy." She pulled back and looked at him. "But what made you think of giving it to me now?"

Suddenly bashful, Tron looked down at the toes of his boots. "Alan-One told me that Users often commemorate special events with such presentations."

"Special events?"

He looked up at her, and his expression held such open tenderness that Yori felt her core processor skip a tick. "It was exactly one cycle ago that Alan-One programmed me to be your counterpart," Tron murmured. "My User gave me the greatest gift that any Program ever received. I am coded to protect the entire Grid … but I am bundled with only you."

Yori felt a surge of warm energy roll over her, so powerful that she thought she might glitch. She placed her slim palm against Tron's cheek and gazed at him with optics shining with love. "You are my counterpart, Tron. For as long as I function. Until the Grid itself crumbles to bytes."

Tron wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close, capturing her lips in a passionate interface that made both their circuit matrixes glow violet. "I wish I had something to give you," Yori murmured against his mouth when they finally broke the connction.

"Well, if my memory circuit isn't faulty, there **are** one or two things you could give me …" Tron mumbled, lowering his face to interface up and down her neck. Yori laughed suddenly. "Tron! You think you're going to overload tonight, don't you?"

Grinning, he pushed her gently backward. "Oh, I _know_ I'm going to overload tonight," he answered before moving in for another long interface.

And in a quiet corner of the Gridspace, Yori's Dat sat and calmly licked its paws.


End file.
